


A Blank Canvas

by miniCrisGM



Series: ACOTAR x ToG: The Ultimate Crossover [2]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Aelin and Feyre being really good friends, Aelin blowing up things, Cassian steals some wine, F/F, F/M, sassy couples everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 08:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18220721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miniCrisGM/pseuds/miniCrisGM
Summary: When Feyre gets pregnant and can't travel anymore, Aelin decides to cheer up her friend and asks her to teach her to paint, but things don't exactly go her way...





	A Blank Canvas

“Well, it’s certainly… different”.

Rhys gulped a little louder than he would have wanted.

Aelin beamed at Feyre, green and yellow paint smudged all over her face and clothes. The High Lady of the Night Court could only stare at the… thing that the blond queen had painted and try to choose the words less likely to start a political conflict.

She gaped a few times and finally settled for the most diplomatic answer she could find.

“You have a most particular talent”.

Aelin nodded, proudly displaying her canvas. Feyre shuddered imperceptibly, her knowledge of colour theory and the slaughter of it that Aelin had perpetrated raking her bones. Rhys, cross-armed against the doorframe of the study, looked at the sunny summer day that awaited them outside, barely managing to contain the laughter. It was bad enough to have to watch Feyre teach the Queen of Terrasen, who might have excelled at everything she had done until now with the notable exception of holding a brush in her hand, but being able to hear his mate’s train of thought at the same time was just mind-bogglingly hilarious. He had probably never heard Feyre utter so many vicious, filthy words in a row since the day he had first brought her to the Night Court.

“Oh, I certainly do”, replied Aelin with a smug smile. “Not everybody appreciates it, of course, but you shouldn’t cast pearls for swine”.

“Poor swine”, Rhys muttered, earning a concealed punch from Feyre. Aelin spun her head towards the bent-over High Lord, detecting the edge in his words but not quite making out their meaning, until Rowan walked in and stopped dead in his tracks, eyes fixed on Aelin’s painting.

“What the hell is that”.

Aelin wrinkled her nose.

“The Lord of the Forest. Terrasen’s stag, _obviously_ ”.

Feyre glowered at the Fae male, violently moving her hands to keep him from making any snarky comments.

Rowan cocked his head and replied with a sheepish grin, “Remind me to _never_ let you paint any tattoo on me”.

 _Well, shit_.

Mor and Lysandra gave a little jolt in the sunny parlour of the town house, startled by a sudden blast from the Rainbow. Sticking their heads outside the window, they saw a thin trail of smoke ascending from Feyre’s studio.

“It seems they’re having fun”, Mor snorted.

********************

After a few summers of court exchanges, the Night Court’s inner circle visiting Terrasen and Adarlan and the courts of Erilea spending time in Prythian, Feyre stopped being able to travel as much as she’d like to. Once Madja certified by every means possible that the High Lady was indeed pregnant, Rhys made such a fuss that Amren declared that Feyre would not travel until the birth had taken place. Even Aelin decided against quarrelling with the Tiny Ancient One.

A High Fae pregnancy was a rare and delicate affair, and the whole of the Night Court was anxious for it to go as smoothly as possible. As much as she liked the pampering that came along with her new state, Feyre refused to be treated like some sickly damsel in distress; she knew Illyrian females did all sorts of things while pregnant – especially now that Cassian and Rhys had enforced the ban on the clipping of their wings – and she would certainly be no less. So although she had given up the most straining physical activities she practiced, she kept up her duties as High Lady and her daily walks around Velaris. Aelin had been trying to work out a way to open a wyrdgate between Velaris and Orynth, but so far Amren had been rather uncooperative and Feyre was also weary of messing with the wrong kind of magic – what she had heard of the Valg was definitely not flattering and she’d rather not have them as unwitting guests in Velaris.

But Aelin could feel how the pregnancy had started to wear down on her friend; the symptoms were ten times as intense as for a mortal, especially when you were carrying twins, and being grounded made for long, boring days. So she decided to cheer up her friend and, at the same time, build up her lady-like skills, which she had found lacking ever since she took up Terrasen’s crown. She had asked Feyre to teach her to paint and the way her friend’s face had lit up at the suggestion was enough to let her know she’d made the right choice.

The first lesson proved her wrong.

It turned out that, as much as she proved to be a prodigy at piano and singing, her talents lay strictly within the musical area. She didn’t need to be one of those daemati to read the anguish in Feyre’s face when she beheld her painting. Rowan had made it _quite clear_ that her rendering of a stag was… well… _abstract_.

“I get it, it’s terrible! I’ll burn it and start again!”

“No, it’s not!” Feyre tried to intercede but Aelin was stubborn as a mule and just wanted to punch her mate in the face for the way in which he and Rhysand were practically scrambling on the floor, roaring with laughter.

“No, it’s just different!”, the High Lady continued. “That’s the beauty of art, it depends so much on the eye of the artist! If that’s how you want it, stags can be… green, and have… a little hat on…”

“That. Is. A. Snout!!”

There was no appeasing the Queen of Terrasen.

***********************

“Had a fun day, guys?”

Mor sipped her tea, lounging on one of the velvet armchairs that furnished the veranda of the dining room facing the Sidra, Lysandra lazily napping with her head resting on Mor’s lap. Mor gently caressed her lover’s auburn hair without taking her eyes off the group that had just come through the door. Rowan’s hair was slightly singed and Rhys wore on his face that look that she knew perfectly from when they were kids and he glamoured some servant to feed him as many jelly tarts as he could find in the kitchen, even knowing he would be punished for it.

Aelin basically growled and stomped away, closely followed by Feyre, while Rowan assessed the damage in the entrance mirror.

“Don’t worry, Whitethorn, your pretty face is intact”, the High Lord chuckled.

“We can’t all have your looks, Rhysand”, he replied, casually flicking his fringe away from his eyes, a faint scent of burnt wood emanating from him.

“I know, it’s a burden I have to bear alone”. With a dramatic gesture, his hand on his brow, Rhys pretended to sink into the couch next to Mor and Lysandra while Rowan smiled and gently nudged him on the shoulder.

“We should leave the queens be for now, I’m sure Feyre will be able to handle the situation”, he said, stalking towards the door that lead to the stairwell below the townhouse, directly into the pantry and the cellars. He knew where Rhys hid his best wine, despite Nuala and Cerridwen’s best efforts at moving it every time the court of Orynth visited Velaris. Rhys languidly pointed towards the door.

“I got a new vintage the other day, twenty five-year old red from Adriata. Tarquin sold it to me at an outrageous price but it’s worth its weight in gold. Bring it up here with some glasses!”

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you”.

Lysandra purred, half reminiscent of the snow leopard she had shifted into that very morning when she and Mor had gone hunting through the snow-capped peaks of the Night Court. Mor had winnowed them both to the cabin where the guys had their yearly snowball fight and had challenged Lysandra to one, which had ended with an overwhelming victory from the shifter and slow, sweet love-making by the fireplace. They had returned after lunch, just in time to take a nap in the veranda before Aelin blew up the painting studio.

“I saw Cassian go in a while ago and leave with something very obviously hidden under his shirt”, she indicated. “If I had to take a wild guess, he probably waited until you were out of the house to go and try that famous wine you’ve been talking about all week”.

“What the…”

Rhys rushed downstairs and a few moments later Rowan and Mor heard a loud thump followed by a crash and the High Lord emerging from the cellar, face red and puffed.

“That bloody bastard… I’m going to fucking enchant my wines so that the next time _anybody_ takes an unauthorised sip they spend the day emptying their bowels in the toilet. CASSIAN!!”

*****************

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad. Nobody was born knowing how to paint”.

“It was humiliating”, Aelin pouted. “I’m sure bloody High Fae were born holding a brush in their hand and painting like masters, just like with everything else.

Feyre cocked her head, considering it. She certainly understood the feeling of inadequacy that she felt when compared to Fae-borns. “You might be right, but know what? I don’t envy them. They miss all the fun!”

Aelin raised her brows with incredulity, but couldn’t help but chuckle upon seeing Feyre’s puffed up cheeks and her sly smile.

“Come on, I know you agree with me! The excitement of trying new colours, new mixtures, a new perspective, of conjuring up an image from the back of your mind, of giving it form, of seeing if appear on the canvas… So you might fuck it up a few times, so what? You just take a blank paper and start again! That’s the beauty of it”.

Aelin pondered Feyre’s words, nodding slightly.

She thought about her training with Arobynn, about how she had hated every second of it while at the same time wishing to excel, to be the best assassin in Adarlan. And she though about her training with Rowan, those first few weeks in Doranelle. She hadn’t known anything about her power, about her magic, and Feyre was right: it was precisely her failing over and over again, the way in which she had been forced to look inside herself, to confront her demons, to become Aelin of the Wildfire. If she had been perfect from the start, would she still be Aelin? Would she still be Fireheart?

She had been given the chance to start again. She had been granted a new canvas, all white, for herself and her people. If she hadn’t given up on saving Terrasen, a few misguided colours would not make her give up on this.

“I think I’d like to try again”, she muttered under her breath. Feyre smiled and drew her arms around her shoulders, hugging her tight.

“Of course you do. And you’ll be great”.

**************

“I’m sorry, honey, but I really don’t see a stag there”.

Aelin whipped her brush in a fluid motion and whacked Rowan’s crotch with it, nearly bringing him down to the floor. She smirked while her mate cursed and hopped, knowing that Rowan’s aim was essentially to get under her skin but that he was as impressed with her improvement as she herself was.

She had given her all in the two weeks that she had left in Velaris before they returned to Orynth, and Feyre had patiently explained and helped her to reach her full artistic potential. She would of course still need a lot of practice and was absolutely determined to purchase an easel and a painting set as soon as she set foot in the palace – she was considering making her childhood bedroom into a painting studio like Feyre’s. Rowan exploited as much as he could Aelin’s beginner’s style and teased her endlessly about it, more often than not ending up with the short end of the stick in their confrontations, but deep down he couldn’t be prouder of his Fireheart.

“I’m going to do a likeness of you and hang it in the throne room, where everyone can see”, she replied smugly.

“Oh, that sounds like a threat. Are you threatening me, Your Majesty?”, he attempted a mocking bow that had both Aelin and Feyre chuckling.

Rhys entered the room with cat-like stealth and grabbed his mate from behind, hugging her deeply against his chest. He gently caressed her swollen belly, a smile appearing on his face at the movement beneath the skin. When he found out Feyre was pregnant, his first reaction was to faint, falling like a boulder to the floor – for which he knew Cassian would tease him until the day he died –, but after he came to, he felt a strange feeling course through his veins: happiness, more exultant than anything he had ever felt before, but also a certain feeling of dread. Would he be a good father? Would he be able to make his children look up to him? He refused to make the same mistakes his own father had made, but still…

But every time he looked at Feyre and at her belly, all doubts disappeared and he couldn’t do anything but smile.

Feyre leaned into him, allowing Aelin and Rowan some privacy to annoy each other to death, and turned to face Rhys and kiss him.

He grudgingly broke off from Feyre when she asked:

“So, have you settled on any names already?”

He growled, half because of the urge to kiss his wife again and half because of how he had been raking his brains to find suitable names for the twins that were mere weeks away from coming into their lives. Of course, neither Cassian nor Mor nor Amren had been the slightest help at all, suggesting the most ridiculous of names just to flip Rhys off.

His feelings echoed through the bond and Feyre giggled. She lovingly patted Rhys on the cheek and kissed him again.

“We’ll find the right ones, don’t worry. They have to be fit for the future High Lord or Lady of the Night Court, it’s not an easy task”.

“It’s not”, Rhys sighed, resting his chin on Feyre’s forehead. Aelin’s laugh made him turn his head towards the Queen of Terrasen and her consort, who was posing in a ridiculously regal stance while Aelin translated it into a new canvas.

Rhys smiled.

“Thank you for never giving up”.

Feyre smiled, life glowing in her eyes.

“Never”.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for the support, I hope you've liked this second silly chapter of Feyre and Aelin being pals :D  
> Leave a comment if you've liked it, it means the world to me <3


End file.
